What are the keywords of advice you would share with anyone who needs to accelerate the introduction, adoption, and profitability of digital content and products globally in 2018? While I have been asked this question several times for the last couple of months, my answer has been very similar regardless of industry and background. Think about investing in meeting the level of authenticity and empathy that your local customers require!

Content Creation

Syncro Soft Ltd. released version 12.1 of its Oxygen XML Editor and XML Author, supporting all XML-related technologies. Oxygen combines author features such as the CSS-driven Visual XML editor with an XML development environment. It includes support for all XML schema languages, XSLT/XQuery Debuggers, WSDL analyzer, and XML Databases, as well as others.

All eyes are on Las Vegas this week as the shiny, new tech toys for 2011 are being unveiled at International CES, held January 6-9. One company launching its products at the show is Live Editions, which provides a range of professional digital publishing products and services that let publishers and information-intensive organizations publish rich, interactive multimedia ebooks or "live editions." The company debuted its products at the Lunch at Piero's media event January 6 and 7."Our solutions enable our clients to repurpose their content by automatically transforming documents into interactive enhanced ePubs, creating new revenue opportunities and leverage their existing content assets," says co-founder Eric Kmiec.

Children's publishing company Scholastic, Inc. released online learning resource TrueFlix, which includes digitized nonfiction titles from the Children's Press book series True Books. With the tool, teachers in grades 3-5 can help build students' subject content knowledge in science and social studies. Forty-seven titles to date have been digitized with more to come; topics range from climate change and black holes to the Declaration of Independence.

The OASIS open standards consortium announced that its members have approved Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) version 1.2. DITA defines XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing information in print and on the web. It is used for books, technical manuals, help files, training, and multimedia authoring.

Springer announced that it would be exclusively responsible for production, marketing, and distribution for the French scientific publishing house Atlantis Press. Atlantis Press will continue to develop its own program of books, primarily in the fields of computer science, mathematics and physics, and will still use the Atlantis Press imprint.

Copia book clubs have gone virtual, allowing members to read each others thoughts in the margins of their ebooks and to create discussions online about the books they are reading. Readers can share thoughts, highlight important or moving passages, recommend books, and engage with their peers and community in a digital manner.

Amazon announced that its Kindle for the Web app will enable users to buy and read full Kindle books—no download or installation required. Bookstores and other retailers, authors, bloggers, and other website owners will be able to offer their readers the full text of Kindle books from their sites and will earn referral fees through the Amazon Associates Program for sales made through their sites. Website owners can embed the Kindle for the Web widget to offer Kindle books.

Digital and mobile publishing developer Texterity and design shop The Wonderfactory are launching a joint venture designed to help magazine publishers deliver content across tablet and smart phone operating systems as well as the Web. The companies are launching a newly designed reader interface and a comprehensive library of interactive modules to debut in Q1 2011.

Innodata Isogen, Inc., an Apple-approved provider of digital publishing and conversion services, has announced the launch of a wide array of custom-designed ebook production services created specifically for publishers and authors to make their work available through Apple's iBookstore.

Vizrt entered into a terms sheet with LiberoVision through which Vizrt will purchase all of the issued and outstanding share capital of LiberoVision. The purchase will occur in three installments: 60% upon signing of the definitive agreement, 20% upon approval of the financial statements of LiberoVision for the year 2011, and 20% upon approval of the financial statements of LiberoVision for the year 2012.

Blow up everything you know about content. Today, it's different. Looking back at the last decade and ahead to the next, there are three game-changing opportunities and challenges that, from our perspective at Common Sense Advisory, product planners and marketing managers must engage.

It sounds simple enough: We'll architect our content to maximize its value to the business. Everyone can get behind that. Of course, it's not quite as simple as it sounds. This would explain why very few organizations actually walk the talk and direct consistent attention, and investment, toward architecting their content with a view to maximizing its value. It's not that most organizations don't see the need or that they don't want to do it. It's just that it has proven remarkably difficult.

Casual Fridays started as a parallel to the dot-com boom on both American coasts in the mid-1990s,partly led by Dockers, a clothing company. The casual trend very quickly became casual everyday, and it spread to the rest of the U.S. as well. These days, except for bankers and a few other professions, it's business casual all the time. I've noticed in the past 5 years or so that econtent has been going through a similar trend toward the casual.

It is a worthwhile exercise to review what I thought were trends in the technologies and tools that I follow and to examine my predictions over the past year. It improves my assessment of important technologies and can refine my forecasting approach. This past year I emphasized three trends: the potential benefits of XML as expressed in the eXtended Business Reporting Language (XBRL); a legal issue combining digital documents (Microsoft Word) and XML—i4i's suit against Microsoft's alleged patent infringement in Microsoft Office Word; and the importance of a new product category, e-readers.

In August, The Wall Street Journal covered Seth Godin's decision that, going forward, he would solely self-publish. Godin, a best-selling author of marketing books such as Tribes and Permission Marketing, felt he no longer needed his traditional publisher. Notably, Godin defined "publishing" far more broadly than did Penguin Group. He plans on distributing his content in a number of media—audio books, apps, podcasts, print on demand, etc. This may be the beginning of a disintermediation between the content creator and the content user, similar to the old one between library users and high-end digital information.

I am a big fan of collaboration. Teamwork, actually. It's a common sense approach to solving many business efficiency challenges. And yet, despite the obvious benefits, it's not standard procedure. Most organizations simply have no idea what is possible when they improve the way their workers work. Take content production, for instance. The traditional process used to create, manage, and deliver all the stuff that powers business is a poorly orchestrated mess, riddled with inefficiencies, many of which can be drastically reduced—or totally eliminated—when workers work toward a common goal and collaborate together as a team using the right tools for the job.

Quark partnered with IXIASOFT in order to integrate Quark XML Author, an XML authoring and editing add-on for Microsoft Word, into DITA CMS, IXIASOFT's content management product. IXIASOFT reports that that this collaboration will allow non-technical subject matter experts to create content without the need for complex DITA or XML editors.

Zmags launched Zmags Professional Edition, which the company says will solve three key issues for marketers and ecommerce brands trying to deliver content to their mobile audience: integration between mobile and online shopping, security risks associated with mobile shopping, and delivering rich video.

Yahoo! launched the Yahoo! Contributor Network, a platform for people to publish creative content. Based on Yahoo!'s Associated Content service, the company reports that this new platform will showcase contributions from more than 400,000 writers, photographers, and videographers.

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the availability of Adobe Acrobat X solutions, including both Acrobat X and a new document exchange service at Acrobat.com. Using new guided Actions, Acrobat X software users can automate routine, multi-step tasks, and share them with coworkers and collaborators, reducing the burden of training. Also added are a series of new layouts, visual themes, and color palettes in PDF Portfolios.

Atex launched its new Atex Tablet Publishing Solution, which is designed to help media companies generate greater revenue on digital devices such as Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy tablet. Atex's application allows media companies to build tablet apps that support multiple subscription models and also deliver targeted advertising.

Ephox Corporation released EditLive! 7.5, the latest update in its set of web authoring products. Notable new features in this latest release include faster loading speeds, new commands for editing tables, enhanced API features, and a new option called Select Edit.

I'm going to let you in on a secret: You're sitting on a gold mine of content that is just lying around hogging up server space. Some of it may even be hidden in physical archives, concealed in printed documents, or stored on microfiche.